Thursday, July 28, 2011

I did a fantastic job following the Golden Rule yesterday, largely because the only people I saw were my eightysomething mother and the twentysomething barista at the coffee bar. And, yes, I was able to be nice to both of them. Somehow, I don’t think it’s going to be this easy the rest of the year.

Also, thanks to everyone for the great conversation about the meaning of the Golden Rule. (Commentators noted: If the Golden Rule means doing unto others as you want to be done unto, then don’t we run the risk of ignoring other people’s wishes? How the heck do you know if what you want is what someone else wants? We have to take care of ourselves first before we can be there for other people. Stress can undermine our effort to be good, and yes, we need to reframe our irritations and angers into positive statements to avoid strangling each other. )

But the topic for today is trust — that is, trust and the Golden Rule. How can I treat others as nicely as I want to be treated if I fear that they are going to stab me in the neck — either literally or metaphorically — while I’m standing around being pleasant to them?

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

I spent 365 days attempting to answer the question: What is goodness? Since I completed that quest on June 1, I’ve been bumbling around trying to figure out what to do next. My year-long journey was wonderful. Challenging, fun, intellectually exciting, and in the end, it did enable me to form my first theory of goodness. Looking back, I think it’s rather grandiose to call that a theory; it’s actually more of a hunch of mine — that goodness is a skill. But I did do what I set out to do, and for that, I am pleased.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

I’ve spent the past year seeking to understand the true heart of good human beings. I’ve asked everybody I could to answer the question: What is goodness? Imagine my surprise when I interviewed MacArthur Fellow Jonathan Shay last week and discovered that goodness may have an aspect I never considered before. A good person, in fact, may be nothing more than a lucky person.

Google Engineering Director Damon Horowitz tackles the idea of using numbers and science to make ethical decisions and comes up with a delightfully different answer than Sam Harris did in The Moral Landscape. Watching Horowitz’ TED talk, I’m energized and hopeful, which is a far different reaction than the one I had when reading Harris’ book.

Monday, June 13, 2011

The task I set for myself more than a year ago has been completed. I haven’t found the meaning of life, or even goodness, but I did do what I said I would do: After 365 days of research I came up with an answer to the question: What is goodness. Hooray me! But I don’t feel like I can let this goodness thing go. Not yet.

No more dodging the issue for me. Tomorrow is the 365th day of my quest, which means I have to finally give you my definition of goodness. Before I went to WisCon last week, I drafted that post, loaded it onto the blog, and boarded the plane to Madison feeling darn-right smug. I thought I’d come up with a fetching and irrefutable answer.But then I got to WisCon, and started trying out my spiffy new definition on other people. Oh dear.

Nearly 365 days. Almost 525,948 minutes. That’s how long I’ve been thinking about the question of goodness. Not every minute, of course. There’s been sleeping, laughter, work and movies. But I’ve never been so focused on a single question for so long in my life. Even coming out as a lesbian didn’t take this long. As the year has progressed I’ve realized that the journey has touched me in unexpected ways. Here are just a few.

For some reason, I wasn't able to transfer copy from my Goodness Project blog to this blog while I was away the last few weeks. Everything else worked great from a mobile platform, but I couldn't get the transfers to work, so finally, after a short delay here are opening blurbs and links to more than a week's worth of The Goodness Project.